The
LW series interrogates relationships between the natural environment and
our rich symbols, discursive conventions and languages for it. The moving
human body, as sign-maker, place-maker and meaning-maker, provides the lens
through which we approach the symbolic structures of landscape.

Funded through
a Mind Millennium Award, this project
took shape in community sessions with people in mental health settings,
at self-help centres at the margins of the Brecon Beacons national park.
We looked at our life stories through storytelling and theatre, using
local myths as masks to speak about our experiences. The project culminated
in day trips into the beautiful Beacons, where we created a video, Earth
Stories, about our lifes, our connections to our home, and our understanding
of what 'natural' might mean for disabled people and their history of
cultural oppression.

Writing/Mapping
were creative writing workshops in Llanelli Hospice, with people in the
terminal stages of cancer. We were re-using, reinventing our local myths
and landmarks, setting them in relation to our lives, and put ourselves
on the map of our local histories. Facilitators Anna Marie Taylor and
Petra Kuppers, funded by Swansea University Adult Education Outreach.

Project
4: Ogham

This dancevideo
brings a city woman into the Welsh mountains. The camera follows and choreographs
her struggling explorations of unfamiliar places - making them spaces
to move in. Following Michel De Certeau's analyses of place, space, and
practices of living, this video uses the ancient Ogham tree alphabet to
structure a woman's carving of a room for herself on a lake shore in the
Beacons. Collaborators: Sophia
Lycouris and Petra Kuppers

In January
2002, the Ystradgynlais Mental Health Drop-In Centre and Swansea University
Continuing Education Department hosted The Olimpias for performance workshops
spread over a month, followed by a video-production. We investigated a
local myth, the Sleeping Giant, focusing on our relation to time, duration
and age. The resulting video presents the changing wintery landscapes
of the Brecon Beacons and Ystradgynlais village as a mask to speak about
our experiences of time.